


dance along the edge

by tripcyclone



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Pining, The Summer of Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-14 14:52:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13592442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tripcyclone/pseuds/tripcyclone
Summary: Every time Victor prodded his side, Yuuri would just look at Victor with the tiniest, cruelest tip of a smile on the corner of his mouth.  It was awful.  It took all of Victor’s self-control not to launch himself forward and kiss that smile until it was nice again.But Victor hadn’t kissed Yuuri yet.  It was a line he was afraid to cross.





	dance along the edge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [longleggedgit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/longleggedgit/gifts).



 

Victor wasn’t speaking to Yuuri.

The two of them were still in the empty dining room, even though they’d finished eating twenty minutes ago, and Victor was lying on the floor reading a battered paperback book.  He was lying on his side; when he first settled down to read, he’d been lying on his back, but then Makkachin pressed her cold nose against his elbow and he dropped the book directly on his face.  Yuuri had laughed at him, and while normally Yuuri’s laugh was one of Victor’s favorite sounds, he had his dignity to maintain.  He rotated himself around so his head was pointed away from Yuuri and went back to reading, ignoring Yuuri’s still-laughing apologies.  Entirely by coincidence, Victor’s new position put his socked feet very close to Yuuri’s hip, and every few minutes Victor would point his foot with all the grace of twenty years of ballet training and prod Yuuri reproachfully in the side. 

Yuuri accepted his punishment with annoying equanimity.  He was slouched comfortably over the table, scrolling through something on his phone, and every time Victor prodded him, he would just look at Victor out of the corner of his eye with the tiniest, cruelest tip of a smile on the corner of his mouth.  It was awful.  It took all of Victor’s self-control not to launch himself forward and kiss that smile until it was nice again.  Victor hadn’t kissed Yuuri yet, even though he wanted to, even though he was pretty sure everyone in Hasetsu knew he wanted to.  It was a line he was afraid to cross.  He _wanted_ to cross it—wanted to scrub the line out of reality with an eraser—wanted to eliminate the word “line” from every dictionary in every language that existed—but he still wasn’t sure how Yuuri would react if he did.

Yuuri’s phone buzzed loudly in the quiet of the dining room.  Yuuri startled and dropped it on the table, which made Victor laugh, but then he saw Yuuri’s face fold into a grimace.  “What is it?” Victor asked, instantly forgetting to be mad.

“Someone from my skating federation’s calling me,” Yuuri said, fishing his phone out of the remains of their dinner.  After his turbulent previous season, Yuuri had come to dread talking to anyone from the JSF; he was convinced their politeness concealed all sorts of secret disapproval.  Victor had spent the last fifteen years fielding irate phone calls from his own skating federation, and the idea of them being silently and politely judgmental sounded like a dream come true. 

Yuuri straightened, exhaled grimly, and tapped the phone screen.  “Hello?” he said in Japanese. 

From his position on the floor, Victor couldn’t hear the other person speaking, so he sat up and moved back over to the table.  Now he could make out a tinny woman’s voice, but it was so faint and Victor’s Japanese was so poor that he couldn’t tell what she was saying.  Yuuri answered her in what Victor recognized as his politest tone.  Victor had been on the receiving end of Yuuri’s politest tone during his first few weeks in Hasetsu, and it was excruciating.  It was so carefully modulated that there stopped being any _Yuuri_ inside of it.

Victor listened attentively, but he could only pick out the occasional word from Yuuri’s half of the conservation— _thank you, sorry, pen._   When Yuuri said that last one, he craned his neck and looked around the dining room, and Victor realized he was looking for something to write with.  Immediately Victor was on his feet, snagging the abandoned pen and notepad Mari had tossed on a side table after the dinner rush.  He set them down in front of Yuuri and sank back down to the floor, closer to Yuuri this time, leaning in so his ear was near the phone. 

The woman on the other end sounded more lively than the JSF representatives Yuuri had talked to in the past.  Victor managed to pick out some of her words now: _please, parents,_ and then, several separate times, _video._ Yuuri had a JSF press conference coming up in a few weeks; maybe they wanted new video of his skating to show?

But Yuuri’s response was apologetic, like he was saying _no._   The woman on the other end sounded surprised, and then she said something in a tone that almost sounded wheedling, but Yuuri just apologized again.  Now Victor was curious.  He waited as Yuuri jotted down some notes on the notepad, answered a few more questions, and said his polite goodbyes.  The moment Yuuri ended the call, Victor scooted over until his shoulder was touching Yuuri’s.  “So what did she want?” he asked. 

“That was their media person,” Yuuri said.  “She was just giving me information about the press conference and the photoshoot afterward.”

Victor waited, but Yuuri didn’t follow up with anything more.  “She was saying something about _video_ , though, wasn’t she?” Victor asked.

Yuuri sighed.  “Yes,” he said.  “She wanted me to ask my parents for old skating videos of me as a kid.  They’re making some kind of _through the years_ montage of all the skaters.”

Victor felt a rush of excitement.  Just a few weeks ago he had finally convinced Yuuri to let him look through the tantalizing trove of old Yuuri Katsuki paraphernalia his parents had saved over the years: magazine articles, Mizuno photo spreads, posed and candid pictures of Yuuri from every stage of his career.  Yuuri didn’t like luxuriating in reminders of his past, so Victor hadn’t pushed his luck by asking to watch his old videos, too.  But if the JSF was going to drop an opportunity like this into his lap, he wasn’t going to complain.  “What a wonderful idea!” Victor said.  “I can help you go through them to find the best material.”

“No,” Yuuri said, “you can’t.”

Victor didn’t even have to embellish the heartbroken look that sprung to his face, although he did lean in a little closer to make sure Yuuri saw it.  “Not—not that you _can_ _’t_ ,” Yuuri hastened to say, looking flustered.  “It’s just that you—can’t.  There isn’t any video to go through.”

Victor leaned back, surprised.  “Your parents never took any?”

“They did,” Yuuri said.  “But all the old ones were on tape, and the onsen had a burst pipe in the storage closet a couple of years ago.  They were all too water-damaged to save.”

Victor stared at him in horror.  “Yuuri, that’s awful!”

“My parents were sad,” Yuuri allowed. 

“ _I_ _’m_ sad,” Victor said.  He threw his arms around Yuuri and buried his face in Yuuri’s shoulder.  “Yuuri, _history_ is sad.”

He waited for Yuuri to say _“Victor”_ with faint exasperation, the way he sometimes did when Victor got too close to him.  But Yuuri just tilted his head and let it rest against Victor’s.  “You and history will live,” he said. 

Victor’s heart glowed in his chest.  Yuuri wasn’t pushing him away, and from this close he smelled _so good,_ and the junction between his shirt collar and his bare shoulder was right underneath Victor’s mouth.  It took all of his self-control not to tilt his head and kiss Yuuri’s warm, shower-clean skin.  “Someone else must’ve taken video at your early events, though, right?” Victor said instead. 

“I don’t know.”

“Can I look around and see if I can find some?”

Yuuri made a neutral noise, and Victor lifted his head and propped his chin on Yuuri’s shoulder.  From this new angle, Yuuri’s cheek was laid out like a canvas in front of Victor’s lips.  “Yuuri,” Victor said in his most reasonable tone.  “I need to see how you skated when you were younger.  As your coach.”

“Mm-hmm,” Yuuri said.  Victor had so often abused the phrase _as your coach_ that Yuuri didn’t pay attention to it anymore.  _“As your coach, I need to keep an eye on what people are saying about you”_ had been Victor's excuse for anonymously joining several online Yuuri Katsuki fanclubs, all of which Yuuri made him quit when he found out Victor was getting into arguments with other fans.  “I’m just correcting their mistakes,” Victor had protested at the time.  “Like this one, look.”

He thrust his phone in Yuuri’s face and Yuuri looked at it blankly.  “I can’t read French,” he said.  Then, alarmed: “Are people really talking about me in French?”

“Of course,” Victor said.  “See, this person keeps calling you the 7th-ranked skater worldwide.  When _obviously_ you’re 6th, now that Cao Bin’s retired.”

Yuuri gave him a strange look.  “He’s not retired.”

“He’s going to be,” Victor said.  “He told me himself at Worlds.”

 _“Victor,”_ Yuuri said with exasperation.  “If he hasn’t announced it yet, should you really be telling everyone about it online?”

“Oh,” Victor said, subdued.  “Well.”

That had been back in July; since then Cao Bin _had_ announced his retirement, and Victor had maturely refrained from going back to the fanclub message board to gloat.  Surely now, in September, he had earned back the benefit of Yuuri’s doubt.  “If I _were_ able to find some video of you, it doesn’t mean you have to give it to the JSF,” Victor said.  “It could just be for you, and your family.  And me.”

Yuuri looked at him from the corner of his eye.  Victor could tell he was wavering, so he made his expression very resolute.  Yuuri sagged in his arms a little, relenting.  “All right,” he said.  “If you really want to.”

What Victor really wanted to do was kiss him.  He wanted it more than possibly anything else in the world.  Maybe this was the right moment: his lips were mere centimeters away from Yuuri’s cheek, so close that all he would have to do is lean in.  It would be sweet, small, casual—

Yuuri yawned so hard Victor heard his jaw click.  Halfway through it, he seemed to remember how close Victor’s face was to his, and he covered his mouth quickly, a faint blush appearing on his cheek.  “Sorry,” Yuuri said. 

No, it wasn't the right moment.  Yuuri was tired.  Yuuri was working himself to the bone in anticipation of the start of the season, and he needed sleep more than he needed relationship-complicating kisses.  “You should go get some rest,” Victor said.

Yuuri hid a smaller aftershock of a yawn behind his hand.  “It’s too early.”

 _You're right,_ Victor wanted to say.  _Let's just stay sitting like this forever._   “You’ll be asleep two minutes after you lie down,” he said instead.  “Go on.”

He reluctantly let go of Yuuri and watched as he stood up, stretched, and leaned down to tear the top sheet off of Mari’s notepad. “I’ll see you in the morning,” Yuuri said.

“Good night.”

Yuuri left.  On the floor on the other side of the table, Makkachin lifted her head alertly.  Victor watched as she stood up, stretched, and trotted off after Yuuri.

So Victor would be sleeping alone tonight.  It was starting to become the story of his life.  After an uninterrupted decade of sleeping in Victor’s bed, Makkachin had been in Japan less than a week before she nosed her way into Yuuri’s room and curled up next to him, unnoticed.  The next morning Yuuri had come to Victor full of panicked apologies, as if he’d kidnapped her.  “Don’t be silly,” Victor said.  “It doesn’t matter to me where she sleeps, as long as she wasn’t bothering you.”  

“Oh, no, not at all!” Yuuri exclaimed.  “She’s such a sweet dog.  It—it was nice.”

So Makkachin slept where she pleased, and the cruelty of a universe that put Yuuri and Makkachin together in a bed that Victor wasn’t invited to sleep in weighed heavily on him sometimes.  But how could he say no?  Makkachin loved Yuuri—loved all the Katsukis—loved living in the bustling onsen, where there was always someone to give her a pat if she wanted one.  She was happy.  It was worth the occasional sting of jealousy.

Victor collected his book from the floor and went upstairs.  He picked up his phone from where it was charging on the edge of his bed and, feeling a little guilty, tapped on the bookmark he still had for one of the forbidden Yuuri Katsuki message boards.  Yuuri had said Victor could go looking for his early skating videos, hadn’t he?  And who was more likely to know if they existed than a group of people who spent every day arguing with each other about Yuuri?

In a superhuman feat of self-control, Victor managed not to open the top thread, which was titled **_Do you think having Victor for a coach is going to help or hurt Yuuri this season?_**   Instead he started a new thread called **_Childhood video??_** and posted:

 

 **yuurifanforever3** :  I heard a rumor from another fan that all of Yuuri’s childhood skating videos were lost when his parents’ house flooded!  That’s so sad if it’s true!  Has anyone ever found video of Yuuri as a kid online?

 

There.  Short, to the point, with nothing that would give him away.  Victor went to bed feeling very pleased with himself. 

 

...

 

The next morning, right after his alarm went off, Victor picked up his phone to find only one person had responded to his post:

 

 **yu-topia-es-mi-topia** :  Okay, first of all Yuuri's parents don't live in a house, they live in a traditional Japanese onsen, and second of all, that's not a rumor, Yuuri said it himself in an interview he gave at the 2013 Japanese Nationals, and third, welcome to the internet, have you ever heard of something called YouTube?

 

 _Ugh_.  Now he remembered why it hadn’t been such a bad thing when Yuuri made him quit the first time.  Victor set his phone down on the far end of his side table so he wouldn’t be tempted to reply.  Then he picked his phone back up and gave it a light underhand toss onto the couch across the room, so he _really_ couldn’t be tempted to reply. 

Because he could write _such a reply_.  Victor laid back down and pulled the covers back over himself with a huff.  It would be so satisfying.   _I **know** they live in an onsen_ , he could say, _because **I live there too**.  As a matter of fact, _ he could continue, _my room shares a wall with Yuuri’s room, and it’s so close that sometimes I can hear the sound of those weird video games he plays, which he bought_ ** _while we were out shopping together,_** _by the way._ And then: _I only called it a rumor because I didn’t want to say_ ** _he told me himself_** _while we were having dinner together, which we do **every single night,** by the way, and also you don’t have to tell _**_me_** _about YouTube, I watched more Yuuri Katsuki videos in the three days after the Sochi GPF than you have in your **entire life** , because at the banquet he **personally asked me to be his coach,** which I **am,** by the way—_

He heard a soft knock at his door.  “Victor?” came Yuuri’s voice.  “Are you not up yet?  It’s late.”

Victor sat up, surprised.  He got up and went over to the couch to retrieve his phone: he had somehow spent twenty minutes just lying there, mentally composing and re-composing his indignant response.  He added one last cutting postscript— _P.S.  Yuuri **worries about me** when he thinks something_ _’s wrong—_ and threw open the door. 

Yuuri must have just gotten up, because he was still dressed in shorts and a rumpled t-shirt, his hair pointing in eight different directions.  He was the most beautiful thing Victor had ever seen.  Victor lumbered forward and wrapped his arms around him.  “Victor,” Yuuri groaned, tilting his head away.  “I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet.”

“I don’t care.”

“ _You_ haven’t brushed your teeth yet, either,” Yuuri said pointedly. 

Victor would’ve felt embarrassed, except Yuuri picked that moment to pry his arms free of Victor's grip and lean in, hugging him back.  Victor's low mood suddenly soared.  "What's the matter?" Yuuri asked, more gently.

Yuuri would probably stop hugging him if he told him the truth.  “People on the internet are _so rude_ ,” Victor said, which wasn’t a lie. 

“Were you reading your Instagram comments again?”

“No,” Victor said.  His publicist had made him swear he wouldn’t anymore, after he got into a highly visible argument with what turned out to be a fourteen-year-old girl from Prague.  “It's just...other things.  It doesn’t matter.”

Yuuri gave Victor a consoling little pat on the back.  Victor pulled back to look at him.  There was a softness in Yuuri’s eyes that made Victor think, regretfully, that this might’ve been the perfect moment to kiss him—if only he’d gotten up twenty minutes ago and brushed his teeth.  “Okay, let’s hurry up and get ready,” Victor said, letting go of him with reluctance.  “Our ice time’s an hour earlier than yesterday.”

When they got to the rink later that morning, Victor hung back at the front counter with Yuuko while Yuuri went to put on his skates.  “Do you and Takeshi have any old video of Yuuri skating when he was younger?” he asked. 

Yuuko looked thoughtful.  “My mom might still have some of the old tapes we made as kids.  Do you need it for anything in particular?”

“Well, technically the JSF wants it, so they can put together a montage of Yuuri’s skating,” Victor said.  “But mostly I just want to see it for myself.”

“I’ll see what I can find,” she promised.  Then, with a flicker of alarm: “Don’t tell my girls.  They’d riot if they knew there was Yuuri footage I wasn’t telling them about.”

Later, while Yuuri was warming up, Victor texted Minako:  **_Do you have any old video of Yuuri skating as a kid?_**

She texted back:  **_I used to film the competitions his parents couldn_** ** _’t go to, but I always gave them the tapes to keep afterward.  I definitely have some footage of him in dance recitals, though.  I’ll see if I can find it._**

After that, Victor put his phone away and tried to put all thoughts of video out of his mind.  The Nishigoris and Minako were his best bets for now, and meanwhile Yuuri was out there rushing his warm-up like he’d been doing all week, already jittery even though his first competition of the season was still three weeks away.  Victor needed to concentrate on what was really important. 

His virtue was rewarded that evening during dinner.  Yuuri had pushed himself even harder than he had the day before, and he was slumped down at the table with his head on his arms, poking the occasional broccoli floret into his mouth and chewing it with his eyes closed.  “Poor Yuuri,” Victor said pityingly, reaching over to ruffle his hair. 

“Nngh,” Yuuri said, jabbing at his wrist with a chopstick. 

Victor was contemplating how dangerous it would be if he leaned over and kissed the top of Yuuri’s head—he had a brief vision of Yuuri jabbing a chopstick up his nose—when his cell phone buzzed on the table.  It was Minako.  **_I found that dance footage I mentioned.  Do you want me to give it to Yuuri when he comes over for practice tomorrow?_**

Victor texted back immediately: **_If you give it to him I_** ** _’m worried he’ll throw it in the ocean so I can’t see it.  I’ll come by at the end of his session and you can sneak it to me._**

Then, since he was already on his phone and Yuuri had his eyes closed, Victor opened up the Yuuri Katsuki message board again and checked on his thread.  Someone else had replied during the day:

**rinksandtea:**   Okay, first of all, **yu-topia** , there’s a house _attached_ to the onsen, so you’re being both pedantic and idiotic.  Second of all, Yuuri’s never talked about the flooding in an English-language interview, so stop pretending like it’s common knowledge.  And third, **yuurifanforever3** , you should check out our Media page!  We’ve created a playlist of as many of Yuuri’s performances as we’ve been able to find.  The oldest videos are from when he was around ten or eleven, but we know he started skating when he was five.  That’s five years of cute Yuuri videos we’re missing! T-T

 

Victor felt inordinately pleased that someone had come to his defense.  Maybe he could find out who _rinksandtea_ was and send them Yuuri’s autograph.  First, though, he followed the link to the Media page and looked at the playlist. 

“Wow,” he said out loud.  It was longer than he imagined it would be.  He’d seen a lot of the videos already, but there were plenty with Japanese titles that he never would’ve come across in his initial search.  “Yuuri, are you done eating yet?”

Yuuri cracked an eye open and looked at his plate.  “I'm done eating the things that aren’t broccoli,” he said.

“Let’s go upstairs!”

With a lot of grumbling, Yuuri allowed Victor to haul him up from the table.  When they got to Victor’s room, Yuuri hesitated almost instinctively on the threshold, but Victor gave him a little push and he went inside.  “Sit down,” Victor said, grabbing his laptop.  “I found something.”

Yuuri collapsed on Victor’s bed like a broken doll and planted his face in the comforter.  “What,” he said, muffled. 

“Well,” Victor said, sitting down next to him, “I went back to one of those fan clubs you made me quit—”

_“Victor—”_

“—and they have this big playlist of every video of you that exists online,” Victor said.  “All the way back to the early 2000s!”

Yuuri lifted his head and looked at the laptop Victor had set on the bed between them.  “Oh no,” he said.

“I’ve seen a lot of the videos with English descriptions already,” Victor said, “but not the ones in Japanese.”  He pointed at the screen. “What’s this first one called?”

Yuuri’s expression was gorgeously miserable.  “ _Cute Yuuri performance at age 10._ _”_

“Age ten!” Victor exclaimed.  He clicked on it. 

A flickering image of an ice rink appeared on the screen; the video and sound quality were abysmal, like a copy of a copy.  A woman’s grainy voice announced something over the PA system, and a tiny dark-haired figure skated out onto the ice.  Whoever had taken the video hadn’t figured out how to zoom in yet, and from this wide angle Victor couldn’t confidently identify the skater as Yuuri.

Yuuri, on the other hand, suddenly reached out for the laptop.  “Let’s skip to the next one,” he said. 

“What?  Why?”

A familiar piece of music started playing, and Yuuri’s hand froze in the air.  _“Carmen?”_ Victor asked, laughing.  “When you were _ten?_   Yuuri, that’s so cute!”

Yuuri’s hand fell to the bed in defeat.  On the ice, the indistinct skater started to move, barely more than a speck against the blinding white.  “Yuuko had done it the season before me,” Yuuri said.  “I liked her version so much, her mother altered some of the choreography and let me do my own version.”

The camera operator started slowly, rustily zooming in.  When Yuuri finally came into clear focus, Victor’s heart skipped a beat.  He was so small but so familiar: the same thatch of black hair, the same look of furrowed-brow concentration on his face.  His movements were more studied and self-conscious, but already he had hints of the artful fluidity that set him apart as an adult. 

He was easily the most beautiful thing Victor had ever seen.

Yuuri dragged one of Victor’s pillows under his head and watched with a dismal twist to his mouth.  “Minako was performing in America that year,” he said.  “Otherwise she would’ve said Yuuko and I had no business skating to a song whose mood and energy we couldn’t match.”

“But look how much you’re enjoying it,” Victor said.  “You look so happy.”

“No I don’t,” Yuuri said.  “I keep making that awful face.”

“You always make that face when you’re concentrating,” Victor said. 

Yuuri groaned.  Then he sat up a little; beyond the laptop screen, Makkachin had poked her head into the room.  “Makkachin,” Yuuri called out, holding out his arms.  “Save me.”

Makkachin bounded happily onto the bed and perched between them for a moment, graciously allowing both of them to pet her.  Then Yuuri opened his arms and she flopped down onto the bed next to him.  On the screen, little Yuuri was getting ready for a jump: he landed a solid single Axel, his furrowed brow lifting into a triumphant smile.  “Aw!” Victor said.  “You were so good for your age.”

Yuuri wrapped his arms around Makkachin and buried his face in the pillow.  “You were doing double Axels when you were ten.”

“ _I_ had the funding of the Russian government behind me,” Victor said.

Yuuri made an unconvinced noise and lapsed into silence.  On the screen, little Yuuri went into the second half of his program, and he was clearly getting tired: his next jump, a double loop, was considerably more wobbly than his Axel had been, and he couldn’t quite keep up the momentum of his final spin.  Nevertheless, he struck his final pose with a look of quiet satisfaction on his face, and the crowd gave him a long, enthusiastic cheer. 

Victor looked over at Yuuri with a grin.  “That was wonderful,” he said. 

Yuuri didn’t say anything.  Victor leaned in toward him: Yuuri's eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open, his face half-mashed against the pillow. 

He had dozed off.  In his arms, Makkachin had closed her eyes too, and the sight of them curled up together made Victor’s heart ache in his chest.  How many times had he tried to picture this, on those nights when Makkachin went away with Yuuri instead of staying with him?  And now here they both were, asleep in Victor’s bed. 

While Victor was still awake. 

What was he supposed to do?  He knew what he _wanted_ to do—he wanted to put his head down on the pillow next to Yuuri’s and fall asleep, too.  It was what he’d been dreaming about since the night he arrived in Hasetsu.  Back then, he hadn’t realized just how big a difference there was between Yuuri drunk and Yuuri sober: Yuuri drunk was uninhibited, wild, affectionate, but Yuuri sober was infinitely more cautious.  Most of the time, anyway.  Sometimes that wildness would explode out of him at unexpected moments—and lately his affection had been a little easier to come by. 

But this was different.  Yuuri hadn’t _meant_ to fall asleep in Victor’s bed.  If Victor let him stay there until morning, he knew Yuuri would be embarrassed when he woke up and realized what happened. 

Victor allowed himself a minute of hesitation, watching the soft rise and fall of Yuuri’s shoulders.  Then he reached out and gave Yuuri's arm a gentle squeeze.  “Yuuri?”

Yuuri’s eyes fluttered open.  “Huh?”

“You fell asleep,” Victor said, making his voice as mild as he could.  “It’s fine with me if you want to stay here, but—”

Yuuri’s hazy expression snapped abruptly into alarm.  He let go of Makkachin and slid backwards off the bed, his feet clumsy underneath him.  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice thick.

“No, it’s all right,” Victor said hastily.  “You don’t have to go, I was just—”

But Yuuri was already moving toward the door.  “I’m sorry,” he repeated.  “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He vanished around the edge of the doorframe.  Victor heard the sound of Yuuri’s bedroom door opening and closing, then silence.  No sound came through their shared wall. 

On the bed, Makkachin had lifted her head in surprise at Yuuri’s sudden disappearance, but after a moment she laid back down and closed her eyes.  Victor shut his laptop with a _click_ and pushed it to the foot of the bed.  A strange, slow pain was creeping on a diagonal from his heart to his stomach, and Victor laid down next to Makkachin, tucking his head into the indent Yuuri had left on his pillow. 

It wasn’t a big deal.  He _knew_ that was how Yuuri would react; he knew Yuuri well enough by now to know what kind of things embarrassed him.  Yuuri had gotten much more comfortable with him over the course of the summer, but there was still that line between them, invisible but ever-present.  And sleeping in Victor’s bed would definitely be crossing it. 

He closed his eyes.  His thoughts moved inexorably to all those times Yuuri had shied away from him— _run_ away from him, sometimes, turning and leaving with only a mumbled apology.  He thought of the story Yuuri had told him about the girl in America, the one who tried to console him, the one who Yuuri instinctively pushed away.  _She intruded on my heart,_ he’d said, and at the time Victor had filed the story away like an instruction, so confident and sure of himself.  He wouldn’t do what she did.  He wouldn’t push too hard, assume too much.

But he had gotten careless again, hadn't he?  He’d started assuming the times Yuuri leaned in to him held more weight than the times Yuuri pushed him away.  He’d started assuming his place in Yuuri’s future wasn’t a matter of _if_ , but _when._  

Makkachin got to her feet, circled around twice, and resettled herself against Victor’s chest.  Victor wrapped his arms around her.  He needed to recalibrate his expectations again, the way he had that day on the beach.  There was a line between him and Yuuri, and Yuuri was staying firmly on his side.  Victor was the one who kept leaning over it, dreaming of more, presuming too much. 

Starting tomorrow, he told himself, he would try his hardest to do better. 

He would take a few steps back. 

 

...

 

The next day, for twelve hours, Victor was the very definition of a model coach.

He greeted Yuuri cheerfully in the morning, the same way he always did.  He didn’t mention what had happened the night before, and Yuuri didn’t, either.  When the two of them arrived at the rink for practice, Yuuri looked faintly anxious, but that wasn’t unusual—he’d been showing up to the rink looking faintly anxious all week, ever since Victor had ill-advisedly declared _“Aren’t you excited, Yuuri?  We’re only one month away from your first competition!”_

Out on the ice, though, Yuuri’s anxiety quickly faded away.  He threw himself whole-heartedly into practice, and Victor met him every step of the way: encouraging when he needed to be, goading when he needed to be, the voice of reason when Yuuri inevitably got frustrated and tried to push himself too far.  He didn’t touch Yuuri the way he sometimes did during practice, sneaky and self-indulgent, and when Yuuri finished up at the rink and went to Minako’s, Victor sent her a follow-up text:

**_Actually, you should go ahead and give the video to Yuuri when you see him today.  If he wants to throw it in the ocean rather than show it to me, that’s his right._ **

When the two of them met up again at the onsen that evening, Yuuri didn’t mention the video.  He and Victor soaked in the hot springs in companionable silence, and at dinner Victor sat down opposite to Yuuri at the table instead of crowding him on the near side.  He brought his book with him and read while he ate, feeling very virtuous. He was just on the verge of congratulating himself for making it through the day when he looked up and noticed Yuuri staring at him curiously.  “What?” Victor asked.

“You’re too quiet,” Yuuri said. 

Those weren’t words Victor heard very often in his life.  Yakov would’ve laughed at the very idea that Victor could be too quiet.  “That’s not a good thing?” Victor said lightly. 

“The last time you were this quiet was right before you got sick,” Yuuri said.  Then a look of horror dawned on his face.  “Are you getting _sick?_   Victor, you _can_ _’t_ get me sick this close to the competition!”

“I’m not sick,” Victor laughed, “I promise.”

Yuuri narrowed his eyes.  He reached across the table and pressed the backs of his fingers against Victor’s cheek.  “You’re _warm,_ _”_ he said accusingly. 

“Of course I’m warm!” Victor protested.  “We were just in the hot spring twenty minutes ago!”

Yuuri moved his hand to Victor’s forehead.  Victor couldn’t help himself: he closed his eyes, leaning in against the pressure of Yuuri’s palm.  “If you’re not sick, then why are you being so quiet?” Yuuri asked. 

 _I_ _’m trying to be good,_ Victor thought.  _But you_ _’re making it_ _so hard_ _._ “I’m just tired,” he said aloud.  “That should tell you how hard you’ve been training this week.  You’ve made me tired just watching you.”

Yuuri’s hand fell away.  Victor opened his eyes and saw that he still had a look of suspicion on his face.  “All right,” Yuuri said, "but I _swear,_ Victor _—_ ”

“I promise _,_ _”_ Victor said, “if I start to feel even the tiniest bit sick, I’ll quarantine myself.”

“You better,” Yuuri said.  He looked down at the bowl in front of Victor.  “Are you finished eating?”

“Almost.”

“Okay,” Yuuri said.  He heaved a sigh.  “I’m going to go upstairs.  Meet me in your room when you’re done.”

He got to his feet.  Victor looked up at him, surprised.  “Why?” he asked.

Yuuri gave him a dry look.  “You know why.”

An uncertain warmth bloomed in Victor’s chest as Yuuri walked away.  He scraped up the last bits of rice and sauce in his bowl and went upstairs still chewing, Makkachin close on his heels.  When he got to the top of the staircase, he saw Yuuri emerge from his own room with something in his hand.  He held it out to Victor.  “Minako said it’s her only copy,” Yuuri said, “so I’m not allowed to throw it in the ocean.”

It was a DVD case.  Victor reached out for it instinctively, then hesitated.  “We don’t have to watch it, if you don’t want to,” he said.  “I know I've been a little pushy about wanting to see your videos.”

“I’m okay with you seeing this one,” Yuuri said.  “I was a better dancer than you when I was a kid.”

Victor blinked at him for a moment.  “And how would you know that?”

“Whenever they do retrospectives of you, they always show the same clip of you as a kid in the ballet studio,” Yuuri said.  “Your form was terrible.”

There was a flicker of mischief in his eyes.  It unraveled something in Victor’s chest; the tight coil of his willpower sagged and unwound.  He’d been _so good_ all day, keeping his distance, staying on his side of the line.  And now Yuuri had that cruel little tip of a smile on the corner of his mouth again, and all Victor could think about was kissing it until it was nice. 

He lifted his chin with wounded dignity and put his hands on Yuuri’s shoulders.  “Well,” Victor said.  “Now I _have_ to see it.”

And he steered a laughing Yuuri into his room.

 

...

 

Saturday was their official rest day.  The rink was always busiest on the weekends, and there wasn’t an hour to spare for Yuuri in between the public skating sessions and junior league hockey games.  So Victor and Yuuri were both surprised when Takeshi showed up at the onsen mid-morning, a shopping bag in his hand and a conspiratorial look in his eye.  “We sent the girls to my mother’s for the weekend so they wouldn’t see us making this,” he said.  He handed the bag to Yuuri.

Both Yuuri and Victor peered inside: there was a homemade DVD at the bottom.  “What is this?” Yuuri asked. 

“Victor mentioned the JSF was looking for video of you,” Takeshi said, “so Yuuko and I went through some of the old tapes at her mother’s house.  Most of it was just Yuuko, of course, but we found a couple of good clips that you could use.”

Yuuri looked flustered.  “I’m sorry to put you to so much trouble,” he said. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Takeshi said.  “It was fun going back and seeing the three of us as kids.”  Then, darkly: “Just don’t tell the girls it came from us.”

As soon as he left, Victor scooped the DVD out of the bag and held it to his chest so Yuuri couldn’t take it from him.  “We can watch it now, right?” he asked.  “It’s your rest day, we don’t have anything better to do.  We could watch it on the big TV in the dining room!”

 _“No,”_ Yuuri said.  “Upstairs.”

The two of them settled down on Victor’s bed with an easy familiarity.  Victor put the DVD in his laptop and started it: a shaky image of a rink appeared on the screen.  “Oh, it’s Ice Castle!” Victor exclaimed.  “It hardly looks any different!”

A girl’s voice said something in Japanese, close to the camera’s microphone.  Yuuri smiled.  “That’s Yuuko,” he said.  “She always liked going around and filming things.”

“That must be where the triplets got it.”

Yuuko swung the camera out toward center ice and zoomed in.  There were two blurry figures out there, practicing spins; when they slowed down, the focus resolved them into Yuuri and Takeshi.  They were both teenagers, gangly and unfinished, and when Yuuri looked across the ice and saw he was being filmed, he turned and ducked his head a little, looking shy.

He was by far the most beautiful thing Victor had ever seen. 

The video cut to a new clip: Yuuri and Yuuko were sitting on one of the concrete planters outside of Ice Castle, their gear bags beside them.  This time a boy’s voice was coming from behind the camera, pitched artificially low and deep.  “Is that Takeshi?” Victor asked. 

"Yes," Yuuri said.  “He'd do this to flirt with Yuuko, sometimes.  He’d pretend he was a reporter and ask her questions.”

Yuuko leaned in toward the camera and answered Takeshi with a pert toss of her hair.  "He asked her what she wanted most out of her skating career," Yuuri translated. "She said she wants to land a triple Axel at the Olympics."

Takeshi kept asking her questions:  _how many Olympic Games will you go to?  Will you only date an Olympic athlete?  Would you ever leave Hasetsu and train somewhere else?_ It was all very cute, but Victor only had eyes for Yuuri, sitting behind Yuuko with his face half-turned away from the camera.  After a while Yuuko seemed to notice how quiet Yuuri was, and she tapped him on the shoulder, smiling brightly.  She asked him a question.

 _"What do you—"_ Yuuri started to translate, then stopped short. 

Victor looked at him.  Faint color had appeared on his cheeks.  "What do you...what?" Victor asked.  

On the screen, Yuuri sat up a little straighter and answered Yuuko, his voice quiet but firm.  Victor's Japanese was so poor that he could only understand a few words: _skate, ice._

And then: _V_ _ictor._

Victor blinked.  He looked from Yuuri to the screen and back again.  “Were you talking about me?” he asked.

Yuuri covered his face with his hands.  The skin still showing around his fingers was impressively red.  _"Yuuri,"_ Victor said, the little plea in his voice concealing a sudden ravenous hunger that had opened up inside him. "What did you say?"

Yuuri exhaled slowly and lowered his hands from his face.  "Yuuko asked me what  _I_ wanted most out of my skating career," he said, addressing the bedspread instead of Victor.  "And I told her I wanted to become good enough to skate on the same ice as you."

A strange, slow warmth bloomed in Victor’s chest.  It traveled on a diagonal from his heart to his stomach and diffused outward, filling him up, turning him soft.  After a moment Yuuri lifted his head, looking at Victor with an expression that mingled embarrassment and resolve.  "What I really meant was that I wanted to stand on the podium next to you," he said.  "And I never managed that.  But I  _did_  skate on the same ice as you last year at the Grand Prix Final, and now I skate on the same ice as you almost every day." The smallest tip of a smile appeared on the corner of his mouth.  "So I'm happy."

For weeks now, Victor had wanted to kiss Yuuri.  He'd held back time and time again, waiting for the right moment, waiting for a sign from the heavens that it was okay to cross that line.  And this was that moment; he knew it was.  Yuuri was clear-eyed and close, smiling at him.  All Victor had to do was lean across the thin line of mattress that separated them. 

And still he hesitated.  Still he held back, afraid of what would happen if he were wrong.

"Was there _—"_ Victor's voice came out low and uncertain.  "Was there anything...else...about me that you wished for?" 

Yuuri Katsuki leaned across the line between them.  The kiss he pressed to Victor's lips was close-mouthed, sweet and small, and it turned the percolating warmth inside Victor into sudden fire.  When he pulled away, all Victor could do was stare at him, heart pounding, searching for the words that had run together, liquid and molten, inside his head. 

“You kissed me first,” he said at last. 

Yuuri laughed.  Yuuri's laugh was one of Victor's favorite sounds in the world. 

“You were taking too long,” Yuuri said.   


End file.
